Another day and another report of alleged lockdown violations by the Prime Minister last summer and still Johnson survives. But as can be seen from the betting chart 2022 has now moved to favourite for his exit. We all know the process. 54 or more MPs write letters to Sir Graham Brady calling for a confidence ballot. The 1922 Committee chair then arranges this to hold a secret ballot of Tory MPs probably the following day. If the no confidence…
Lots of speculation today about the future of Boris Johnson as prime minister and leader of the Conservative Party. The big question is how long is he going to remain in the job and Betfair have just put one up on whether he’ll still be in the job at this year’s Conservative conference. The latest betting has this as a 70% chance which is almost the same odds that are currently being traded on Smarkets on him NOT being the…
Reinvesting some of my North Shropshire wininngs At the weekend I placed a bet at 7.2 on Betfair that Starmer will be the next PM. To be successful this gamble has two very distinctive components – that Johnson goes into the next general election as Prime Minister and in that election the Tories lose their majority. I think many are overestimating the possibility of there being a change in the Tory leadership before the next general election. . Perhaps we…
In looking at the above splits remember this was carried out amongst the group that you would expect to be most loyal to Johnson. If there is such division amongst CON members what do the wider pool of CON voters think? The polling was commissioned by SkyNews and comes after what has been the most difficult period of Johnson”s time at number 10 culminating in a second humiliating Westminster by-election in the formerly solid blue Tory seat of North Shropshire….
and why Mark Drakeford might end up being the favourite to succeed Sir Keir Starmer Like Pip Moss, I’ve been laying Andy Burnham as next Labour leader for a while, I don’t think he’s as good as he thinks he is, which is a rarity for for an alumnus of the University of Cambridge. Looking at this YouGov poll from 2014 his accent might be a hindrance. If he is hoping his job might change his accent, the Mancunian accent…
Looking ahead to 2022 one period where Boris Johnson might be at most risk this year will be in the aftermath of May’s local elections, helpfully Smarkets have a market up on these crucial local elections. One of the reasons Boris Johnson will be at risk is that if it is a poor night for his party, in contrast to the 2021 locals where Boris Johnson led the Conservatives to a 7% lead over Labour in the national equivalent share…
Last September, the politics team at Smarkets decided to start offering a market on one local by-election every week. We’ve had a look back at the results to see if we could learn anything about whether the betting markets provided any useful information about the outcomes. On average, there are about five local by-elections across the UK every Thursday. Unsurprisingly, we’re usually going to pick whichever one we think looks the most competitive. (One other factor we sometimes consider is…
The betting markets haven’t caught up Last year I opined on Twitter that there were several markets at once with odds which I’d usually call ‘Bet of the Year’. I’ve previously written about all but one of these: Andy Burnham to be next Labour Leader. He’s currently 7/2 or so at the bookies and a tad longer at exchanges, but he should be far far longer. The reason for this is that Burnham really only has one clear path to…